I don’t typically review many middle-grade books, but I recently read this one with my third-grader and I wanted to share my thoughts after reading it. This is a heavier book for young readers because the plot follows a family struggling to cope with a severe mental illness. While this book is rated for grades 3-7, I would definitely err on the higher end of that spectrum.
When twelve-year-old Della Kelly finds her mother furiously digging black seeds from a watermelon in the middle of the night and talking to people who aren’t there, Della worries that it’s happening again—that the sickness that put her mama in the hospital four years ago is back. That her mama is going to be hospitalized for months like she was last time.
With her daddy struggling to save the farm and her mama in denial about what’s happening, it’s up to Della to heal her mama for good. And she knows just how she’ll do it: with a jar of the Bee Lady’s magic honey, which has mended the wounds and woes of Maryville, North Carolina, for generations.
But when the Bee Lady says that the solution might have less to do with fixing Mama’s brain and more to do with healing her own heart, Della must learn that love means accepting her mama just as she is.
I grabbed this book as an audiobook to listen to when I was in the car. I like to listen to audiobooks that my children will also enjoy, and I have heard great things about this book. I didn’t know what to expect with this book, since I wasn’t entirely familiar with the plot before we began. But I don’t think I would have chosen this particular book as a “car book” if I had known. That isn’t because the book is poorly written or that it is bad, it’s simply just a “big downer.” I had heard so many people say that they felt that this story exemplified love and hope but I didn’t really get a “hopeful” vibe from it.
I am going to spoil this book to explain why, so here is your spoiler warning right now.
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This story follows 12-year-old Della Kelly, a sweet girl who is an older sister to a rambunctious toddler. She lives with her mom and dad on a great big farm where they grow watermelons and other crops. The trouble is that their mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after Della was born and since her little sister was born, things have gotten much worse.
While this book is obviously not graphic at all, it still managed to seem scary to my kids. They didn’t really enjoy reading about a mom who wasn’t capable of being a mom because something in her brain just broke one day. This concept was really dark for my kids and they all felt pretty sad listening to Della’s inner monologue. Della feels as though it is her fault that her Mama is broken because the illness happened so soon after she was born. She spends a great majority of the book fruitlessly attempting to fix it, while not really fixing anything at all. She kind of hopes that the magical honey from the local Bee Lady will fix it. She prays that God will fix it. She goes down every avenue she can think of but nothing works. In fact, her Mama gets so sick that she has to be hospitalized after neglecting their toddler for many hours. The relationship between the baby and Mama was especially hard for my kids to listen to because there are times when she refuses to let her little sister have anything to eat or drink or lets her sit in a dirty diaper for many hours. These scenes where the little girl cries for her mama’s help but doesn’t receive it are confusing. My kids just couldn’t wrap their heads around why a Mama would do those things. It’s hard to explain schizophrenia to young children.
In the end, Della doesn’t fix her mom. Instead, she learns to accept that her mom will never be fixed and that she might one day too end up developing schizophrenia. The sections where she feels at peace about this are nice and all, but not very reassuring for my kids. The idea of a genetic disorder that completely consumes someone’s brain and makes them act like a different, meaner person was pretty shocking for them.
We did finish this book together, but I ended up not listening to it in the car much because it was a total mood killer. It’s not exactly the kind of story you want to pre-game a trip to a local playground with. It’s a deep book that expresses big, scary thoughts and feelings. That’s not to say that this book isn’t important or that it isn’t worth reading. I think that if you have a mental illness like this in your family, this book might be a somewhat gentle way to help a child understand. There are some aspects that are nice, like how Della’s dad doesn’t give up on her mom or that Della’s friend goes out of her way to try to help her. Even the scene with the Bee Lady is pretty nice. But a lot of this book is really repetitive and somewhat boring. There are a lot of descriptions of how hot and miserable everyone is, a lot of descriptions about food being juicy and sweet and delicious, and… well, a lot of descriptions in general. The story kind of crawls along because of all these descriptions and I felt pretty anxious reading it because I was so worried about what was going to happen to her baby sister (particularly when Della decides she is the problem and tries to run away until her mom gets better.) When I asked my son what he thought about the book, after it was done, he said it was “kind of boring and sad.”
This book opens up a lot of discussions about mental health, coping with these challenges within your family, and loving people despite their imperfections. But it is not a light or easy read and I wouldn’t recommend this for young readers because these concepts are pretty hard to understand (even if they are coated in sticky, sweet honey.) As a reader myself, I think I would have loved reading this book when I was in 7th grade because I read a lot of books that kind of have a similar theme. One of my favorite books from my younger years was Esperanza Rising, which absolutely deals with darker themes and has stuck with me for many years. If you know of a kid who likes these types of books and doesn’t mind shedding a few tears over them, then they might like Where the Watermelon Grows as well.
If you are an adult, but you enjoy this type of story, I think it is a pretty quick and easy read that still offers valuable insight into how a child might feel when they are in a difficult situation like the character in this story. Many of the reviews that I have read for this book from other grownups agree that it is well-written and enjoyable to read. Whether the kids agree, is a whole ‘nother question!
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